To be fair I've seen the opposite happen as well, where people will take code released into the public domain and write Rust bindings for it and release those as GPL or some other more restrictive license, and I think that sucks too.

How hard is it to just - keep the same license? Just preserve the author's intent. They had a vision in mind and made a choice when they put their creative energies out into the world. Pass that forward.

The idea that you can cleanroom a codebase with an LLM to safely pivot licensing is really not anything I need to waste words arguing is the thought process of the worst sort of dipshit tech bro.

If you're on the fediverse you know this already.

At least this latest indignity to human creativity doesn't seem to involve Rust, a language I deeply love but one that also has a serious Bro problem and is being wielded in similar sorts of license-washing.

My worry is that the MIT license itself will become something like a scarlet letter. I am really not a proponent of GPL-by-default.

If someone wants to take my code and use it in an indie game or something I want them to be able to do that and not feel like they need to release their source code or pay me or do anything other than have my name in a readme somewhere.

It just makes me happy every time I get even the slightest hint that something I put effort in could be used in some way by someone else.

These are different kinds of liberties. I respect that the GPL prevented wholesale looting of volunteer efforts by corporations and the world would be a worse place without it.

But there is a space I think for unencumbered code, just ideas that float freely in the intellectual aether anyone is free to pluck down and use as they please.